Chapter 4
“A-yuh, that’s far enough forward.” She had a Yankee sarcastic twang and sat short in her seat. Derek hadn’t realized she was female until she spoke—a low, throaty voice but very female. He’d been meaning to just mess with a guy, not practically stick his nose in a woman’s face.
With her visor up, his night-vision goggles let him see her face just fine.
She’d have no visibility inside the cockpit, but he could see that her smile quirked to one side when she was being funny.
He saw the arched eyebrow telling him he was in dangerous territory.
No way to differentiate color through the NVGs, but he’d bet those eyes were light above the wide cheekbones.
Nice face. And he liked that the humor reached her voice even while it threatened to prick him with sharp objects.
He found a headset hanging on the back of the pilot’s seat and pulled it on. “Derek Kylie. Thanks for the ride.”
“Abby Rose. Welcome aboard.” She slid down her visor, turning into one of the Night Stalker cyborgs, looking far more machine than woman, and faced forward. “Any idea what’s coming next?”
“Typical,” Derek laughed.
“Typical?” Her tone went arch at his perceived insult to her gender’s abilities. And it tried to go mean, but she didn’t pull it off with that amusing so-very-Yankee accent.
“Typical for a training op.” His big sister had whupped no-underestimating-women into him fair and square.
She was the one with Papa’s big build and had followed into his rodeo career just fine.
“I didn’t even know we were headed northeast until I saw your departure path.
For actual missions, they’re far more inclined to tell us where to go and what to do. ”
She sighed. “They are. Or it could be that Okie accent of yours convincing them they didn’t want to tell you.”
“Good ear.”
“Two of them.”
“Yep, I’m just an Okie from Muskogee. Maybe that is why command never tells me shit.”
He could see her fine fingers moving on the cyclic, but it was the copilot who was currently the pilot-in-control.
Nothing changed on the displays he could see, so she must be toggling views inside her helmet while they talked.
Couldn’t be a Night Stalker pilot without an exceptional ability to multitask.
He’d heard plenty of idiots call their pilots, especially those riding the comfortable seats in the big Chinooks designed for long-haul flights, armchair warriors.
They’d hauled his ass out of too many hairy places for him to have anything but the utmost respect for them.
Only the second time he'd run into a female pilot though, which meant this woman was seriously special.
Derek liked special.